You and I Remember "Meet The Press" Very Differently

The former host of NBC's "Meet the Republicans", is once again in the news.

And I honestly can't imagine that anyone here will be surprised to discover that Mr. Gregory...

...remembers his awful tenure as the muppet in charge of NBC's flagship Sunday morning defense-contractor-and-boner-pill-ad-delivery-system very, very differently than any sentient being who ever watched the wretched thing, and...

...has taken a page from his Torah-study-buddy David Brooks' dodge of deflecting attention away from the demonstrable awfulness of his professional work-product by writing a book about his spir'chuuulll juuuurneeee.

But more about that first thingie.

From Mr. Gregory's interview in New York Magazine:

Do you think about what you could have done differently to reverse the ratings decline?

First of all, NBC at that time, if you remember, was having a lot of different difficulties. Nightly News was starting to suffer. The Today show fell out of first place. There was no question we were struggling in the ratings. But remember I was No. 1 for three years of my tenure. The show was still profitable and I was trying to do things and make changes to help the show evolve.

Like what?

We were getting away from the predictable guests on the show. We introduced a lot of new voices, from Baltimore’s mayor to Atlanta’s mayor. People who are on all the time now, we were the first to put them on...

Having documented the Sunday Morning Gasbag Cavalcade for over 10 years, I can only rock on my heels and laugh like a child at the idea that Greggers somehow really thinks his ossified, Beltway Conventional Wisdom Reliquary and Turd Detailing Shoppe was somehow in the vanguard of putting edgy, new voices into American homes every Sunday.  

Here, drawn at random from my vast archives, is a random sample of what you were likely to see on "Meet the Republicans" on any given Sunday (trigger warning for anyone who has severe bullshit allergies):

...
For example, John McCain was put in front of a camera because, being Memorial Day, the law required that John McCain be prominently displayed in front of all public buildings, national parks and Imperial Propaganda Outlet Malls.

On two different channels, Joe "Wanktastic Failure" Klein and Tom "Even Bigger Wanktastic Failure" Friedman were seated in front of teevee cameras to make bold, predictions about conflicts in a part of the world where the have been spectacularly and infamously wrong about almost everything.

Conservative Drone David Brooks was put in front of a teevee camera on America's top-rated Mouse Circus Show to re-read his New York Times column.

Conservative Drone Alex Castellano was put in front of a teevee camera on the same top-rated Mouse Circus Show to re-read his "Daily Caller" column that no one reads.

Fake Democrat and Useful Conservative Idiot Harold Ford, Junior was put in front of a teevee camera on the same top-rated Mouse Circus Show to advocate tossing grandma off a slightly lower cliff than Republicans are proposing. I believe the word "Serious" might have been used seven or a hundred times to underscore the seriousness

And David Gregory -- the establishmentarian-testicle-cozy who hosts America's top-rated Mouse Circus Show -- said this (referring to what Barack Obama must do to be taken Seriously and win re-election):

"And you got to be able to say, 'Look, I'm for the thing that those Republicans are for, but they're just way too extreme.'"

and this;

And then here's Bill Clinton giving some ammunition to the Republicans by saying to the Democrats, don't be timid here. Don't go to the old, you know, mediscare tactics. Do something courageous.

So there's that.

And then there's this (the NY Mag interview continues):

The other segment that got a lot of attention was your interview with Glenn Greenwald. What do you think about that now?

I’m in the business, as a journalist, of asking tough questions. I would do it again. And so is he. And I found his response surprising and his fans' [response] surprising.

In what way?

He has no problem taking people on and asking people questions and probing and pushing. And yet, he seemed to not like when it’s done to him.

Leaving aside the fact that the Greenwald Horde does, in fact, go immediately from zero to apeshit whenever anyone dares to suggest that Mr. Greenwald be held to exactly the same standards which Mr. Greenwald loudly insists that everyone else be held to, what was striking about Mr. Gregory's interview was not that he asked Glenn Greenwald "tough questions", but how completely out of character it was for Greggers to ask anyone anything remotely resembling a tough question at all.

For his entire tenure at "Meet the Republicans", Mr. Gregory was infamous for being one of the Beltway's most utterly reliable and compliant Conservative fuck-toys.  Week after interminable week as wingnut dementia was on full, kick-line display right in front of NBC's front man he let it all slide with a wink and a smirk and nary an impertinent follow-up question, regardless of how much shoutycracker bullshit was erupting just five feet away.

And now he is making the rounds of the teevee shows to pimp a book about how George W. Bush led him to find Jebus in the back pew of his wife's Methodist church.

Well, other than their coffee being weaker than Donald Trump's grasp of foreign policy, the Methodists I know are pretty good eggs, so I wish them the very best of luck trying to excavate this particular Pharisee's head from his own ass.

As for the pastor of Greggers' church, may I suggest you put the pedal to the Matthew and not let up until he is willing to atone for debasing the already-polluted profession of political journalism:

...

23 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.

24 Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.

25 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess.

26 Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also.

27 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness...